Bay Area Schools Get "Home" Trees

Last Saturday, the campuses of Dr. Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy and Malcolm X Academy, in the Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood of San Francisco, joined Earth Day Network's global Avatar Home Tree Initiative. An army of 30 volunteers recruited by Friends of the Urban Forest put the first-ever trees into the ground at Malcolm X and plumped up Drew's tiny tree population with new lemon, crab apple, Japanese maple, silk and oak trees. Friends of the Urban Forest, a highly respected Bay Area non-profit, has planted over 1,000 trees in the Bay Area since 1981, and dedicated this regularly scheduled tree planting to James Cameron's initiative. Covered by the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's primary daily newspaper, the new trees have excited the children, particularly the lemon tree, as they await the opportunity to make their own fresh lemonade. Planting trees in Bayview/Hunter's Point, which is primarily full of rental buildings, is always gratifying, said Ben Carlson, spokesperson for FUF. "It's a neighborhood in which we love to plant trees because it has relatively few of them and plenty of room for more, and they make a terrific visual impact."